Viva PhotoShop!!!

There are loads of softwares out there claiming to make the world a better place to live. Humans often bond to these necessary evils so much that they can't live without them. Especially for my profession MS Office package is gonna be the lifeline and I cannot imagine people to have managed to do business without these tools to aid.

At this Information Age its quite weird if you do any activity without a computer to aid. If you ever came across an avenue in which computers haven't played a role, you have just stumbled upon a huge market opportunity and we might have some serious business to talk :))

Enough of that, today I am gonna write about a fascinating creative suite that has transformed the world of Desktop publishing and Raster graphics totally. Yes I am indeed talking about Adobe Photoshop. I ain't gonna brief about who created it and what you can do with it. If I said, "with Photoshop you can do Anything and Everything", It will still be an understatement.

Lets save some time. You can quickly come back after getting some perspective from Wiki, for we have a tutorial to get you started right away.

Start your software and study the various windows available on the screen, you'll find picture editing tools and brushes to the left and a window with layers and channels to the right( layers are indispensable components for any raster editing tool.)

You'll also have a blank sheet from which your masterpiece is gonna take shape. Today we'll learn how to deal with layers and add detail to an object. In fact Photoshop is all about placing the right layers in the right order with right settings. Although it ain’t as easy as it seems.

Now we all need a base to work on right. Let’s use a typeface to work on. My intention is to mimic the “e” in Internet explorer and make it look like a plastic.

Step 1:

Click the Type icon on the left and enter the letter “e”.
Choose Times New Roman and Bold Italic.
Choose some dark blue color. I have chosen #1A68AF and size as you wish.

Step 2:

Hold Ctrl and click on the type layer to select it's border. Next, create a new layer and contract the selection by about 16 pixels.

Select > Modify > Contract... 16 Pixels

Step 3:

Select White as the foreground color, and fill the selection. Alt+Backspace

Remove the selection Ctrl+D, and Gaussian Blur the layer by 16 pixels.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... 16 Pixels

Then, Gaussian Blur it again by 8 pixels, and then by 4 pixels.
Set the Layer's Opacity to 50%, and the Blending Mode to Color Dodge.

Step 4:

Now, hold Ctrl, and in the Layers window, click on the type layer, to select it's transparency.

In the Channels window, press the Save Selection as channel button. Now, click on the new Channel it created.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... 16 Pixels

Then, Gaussian Blur it again by 8 pixels, 4 pixels, and finally 2 pixels.

Invert the selection Ctrl+Shift+I, clear the selection with black Del, and finally Deselect.

Step 5:

Go back to the Layers window. Hold down Ctrl, and click on the Type Layer, again, to select it's transparency.

Create a new layer, and drag it above the Inner Glow Layer.Select the new layer, fill the selection with black, and rename the layer Highlights.

Check on Preserve Transparency, and set the blending mode to Screen.

Step 6:

With the Highlights layer selected, go: Filter > Render > Lighting Effects...

Set the Material Properties to:
Gloss: 79
Material: -37
Exposure: 56
Ambience: -100

Change the Texture Channel to Alpha 1, or the channel you were working on before, and it's Height to 100.

Create a directional light, Intensity 32, so that the lighting covers most of the “e”, but the brightest parts are still on the edges.

Step 7:
When the Lighting Effects is done, Gaussian Blur the layer by 3 pixels, to get rid of the levels.

Now this is the step where you can use your own artistic freedom.

Image > Adjust > Curves...

The curves window will begin with a straight line. Click any place on the line to create a new point, and drag the points to move them.

Step 8:

Throw down a blue drop shadow (since the light is flowing through the clear plastic), and voila you have the plastic!



I don't claim to have invented this method. Although this was the first tutorial I had tried out 4 years back when I learned Photoshop and it does a good job at introducing all the features of PhotoShop.

Will soon come back with some of my originals.

Quake III Arena I miss you...

We all miss so much fun that we had during our undergrad days. Quake III Arena is just one among that endless list. I took up gaming soon after joining college. I would do anything to lay my hands on a piece of software that possesses a potential to flaunt skill and mastery. Be it Adobe Photoshop or MATLAB or Quake they have thrilled me a lot and continue to thrill me as I get better and better at dealing with them. This piece of article is a tribute to Quake III Arena that brought me fame and name while in college.

To the uninititated, Quake III is a game developed by id Software and released in 1999. The company was founded by John Carmack and three others. They scaled the gaming industry with their famous titles Wolfenstein 3D (1991), Doom (1994), Quake (1996). But even though many games have been released including Quake 4, Q3A continues to provide the best gaming action across multiplayer competitions and Quake fans worldwide.


So what makes Quake 3 the King of all First person shooters?? Is it the Unique openGL platorm, the technology that introduced vertex animation and spline curves in 3D modelling? Or is it the novel gameplay where people meet in an Arena and frag ( an euphemism for "killing" in the virtual world ) anything and everything that moves?

To me the endless opportunities offered by multiplayer gaming appeals a lot. I would say the LAN connection in our hostels attained its purpose of existence only after I introduced this game to my friends. There would be deathmatches at midnights for which people would gather to merely spectate the battle that lasts not more than 5 mins at times. Doesn't it feel great if someone just gawks at you and says " How do you do that !!"

The game has five difficulty levels. The nigthmare level forms a technical barrier to the extent a computer can think and react. We were a couple of hardcore gamers who were bored of continuously taming the bots at their toughest levels and often resorted to multiplayer mode for some nerve racking, relentless action.

I went on to organize gaming competitions as part of Vision, a technical symposium of our department. Thats when I came to know there were too many crazy people who played it full time. My friends from engineering colleges in and around Chennai had already formed professional clans. This is not just a patronizing blog. Although I would seriously recommend you to play this game if you call yourself a die hard gamer.

Now it has been two years since I played this game the way it ought to be played. I can't wait till I could con some of my fellow b-schoolers into this. I am sure I will find atleast a handful of buffs like me. Hoping to take it forward to the next level.